“She’s with Aubree at the bridge.”
Holt pops up and swings a towel over his shoulder. “Who’s with Aubree at the bridge?”
“Baya,” I shout, rushing out the door. I jump in the truck, and Laney joins me.
A thousand thoughts swirl through my mind. Aubree said she’d let her rush. I bet that’s what’s happening. Maybe Baya got in a wreck on the way over? Maybe she hit her head, and she’s passed out somewhere. Whatever the hell happened, it doesn’t feel right. Something is definitely off. I can feel it in my bones.
“Text Holt and tell him to check out Alpha Chi,” I bark into Laney.
I honk my way through a traffic light and bullet my way past the mansions where Alpha Chi nestles itself in the center of the opulent row.
I speed past a group of girls who just crossed the street as I head up to the main thoroughfare that leads to the bridge.
“I’m coming, baby,” I whisper as I speed up the dark winding roads. I hope to God the only thing I find is Baya and a bunch of girls from Alpha Chi singing in a circle.
Somehow I doubt that.
I race us over to Pike’s Peak where the bridge is located. I’m shaking with frustration and pissed to hell just praying Baya is safe.
“That’s it,” I say as I spot Laney’s sedan parked in front of the boulder where Baya and I have taken our bikes these past few weeks. The Witch’s Cauldron sits just beyond it, and the bridge is a good ways up ahead. I jump out and am half way up the trail before I hear the door slam again.
“Baya!” I scream, navigating my way through the brush. I hit the bridge and jump onto it, giving it a mean sway, but there’s nobody up here. “Shit.” I dig my fingers into my hair. Baya is here somewhere. “I’m going to find you.” I start making my way across the bridge and glance back to see if Laney has caught up yet, but a pale branch in the stream catches my attention, and I freeze in my tracks. That’s no fucking tree limb. That’s a leg.
Without thinking, I jump in.
“Baya!” I shout as I traverse a downed birch trunk to get to her, but she doesn’t flinch. “Fuck.” I make my way over and pluck a dried shrub off her chest. Her head is perched on a rock close to shore, and her body is hugging a boulder preventing her from drifting downstream. I pick her up and place her lips to my cheek and feel a warm breeze expel as she breathes over me. “Baya.” I pull her close as I climb us out of the rocky crag.
Laney comes up on us and lets out a viral scream.
“We got to get her to the hospital,now,” I pant, racing back to the truck. “Baya,” I whisper her name as I place her in the backseat with her head on Laney’s lap.
I drive so fast that the road blurs through my tears. There’s something startlingly familiar about this entire scene. It’s all playing out like it did years ago on that fateful night that Stephanie died—getting a call just before dawn that Steph was in the hospital—finding out she hurt herself—that it was all because of me.
The hospital comes up on the right, and I barrel us into the lot. I park at the base of the E.R. and jump out, scooping Baya into my arms. Her lips are blue, her skin pale as chalk.
“Baby, wake up.” I press my lips to hers as I hustle her to the front of the emergency room.
A woman with squatty features and square glasses points behind me. “Excuse me sir, there’s a long line ahead of you.”
“My girlfriend needs helps.” A knot the size of a shoe lodges in my throat, and I can’t get anything else out. “She’s unconscious—she was in the stream,” I muscle it out through the pain.
“I’ll buzz you in.”
I jet over to the entrance just as the door opens and lie Baya on the first gurney I see. A swarm of doctors and nurses rush at her and wheel her across the way, closing a curtain around her.
“Bryson.” Laney pulls me into a hug and rains hot tears over my shoulder.
“She’s going to be fine,” I whisper. “She has to be.”
“Bry!” Holt shouts from down the hall as he runs over.
“Where the hell is Aubree?” Laney clutches at her throat.
“I don’t know,” Holt pants out of breath. “But I found this.”
He holds out a blue binder, and I snatch it from him. Written across the top in neat squared off handwriting is my name. “What the…” I open it up and find countless pictures of myself. Me in front of the Black Bear, the Sky Lab, my face in a newspaper clipping from my high school graduation. I flip the page and see my picture from the yearbook with my face X-ed out—devil horns drawn onto my head with fangs dripping from my lips. “Shit.” I turn the page and freeze.
It’s a newspaper clipping of Stephanie’s obituary.
